A Hero's Spirit: Echoes in Time

Chapter 3: A New Land

A/N: Hello and welcome back! It's been a hot minute since the last update, and I'm very pleased to bring this new chapter to you. Sorry that it's short (only about 4.5k words) and that there isn't much that happens, but I hope you enjoy it regardless. We'll have another chapter of Wind and Arcadius bonding, so no worries there!

IMPORTANT: I've seen a few things online where people are using AI to finish unfinished stories. They'll plug in a fic and the AI will make up an ending for it. PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS!! DO NOT SUPPORT THIS ACTION! It is both highly offensive as a creator and morally horrendous. If you have any inclination to do so, then please, for the love of Hylia or Din or Nayru or whatever deity you follow—ASK THE AUTHOR'S PERMISSION. We pour our hearts and souls into these works. We bleed on these keys to bring you content that you can read FOR FREE. And to do something like that... It's beyond insulting. I am not one to anger, but the idea that someone could do that to my stories enrages me.

Because I know people enjoy my stories, I have vowed to never take them down. But if I were to ever find someone 'finishing' one of my stories with AI of all things.... Well, let's just not do that, shall we? :)

Now that that's out of the way, I'll kindly ask you all to keep an eye on both your own works and those of your friends and favorite authors.

Oh! I'm also working on an original novel now! I hope that when it's finished, you'll check it out! (There's actually two, and one was initially a Zelda fanfic that I've decided to modify into it's own original story, since it was a First story).

The moment the world stopped spinning, Link forced himself to his feet. The familiar forest was nowhere to be found, instead he found himself in the wide open plains of an unfamiliar kingdom. His gaze caught sight of the portal closing. An unfamiliar time.

"Fuck." He muttered a few more choice words in the direction of the divine before turning his attention towards Wind—who'd been knocked unconscious during the collision. The kid seemed thankfully unharmed, sans a rather nasty lump on his head where he'd collided with Daruk's Protection.

Link sighed, pushing his anger towards Hylia back. "Where do you guys think..." His eyes widened when he realized something important.

He was alone.

A sharp panic coursed through his veins with an ugly zing as his eyes flitted about. Urbosa, Revali, Daruk, Yatir, Mipha, Zelda— Nobody was here. And for the first time in three years, Link felt truly and utterly alone. His legs went numb as they crumpled beneath him, sending him to the grassy plains with a quiet thump. He hadn't been alone since the day he died.

He forced himself to take a deep breath. He had to calm down. He was going to get nowhere by working himself up into a frenzy. Link wrenched his eyes closed and made himself tune out his emotions and focus on the world around him. He concentrated on what he could hear. There were birds singing in the trees. Rabbits and other small animals scurrying in the grass. The wind brushed the fields with gentle invisible fingers as strange sounds—civilization, his mind offered distantly—echoed from the far north. He could hear a creek bubbling from the woods behind him.

He knew these sounds. Nature. The Wilderness. They were his home before anything else. Before the ghosts and kingdoms and politics and people. Something within him finally settled, though he felt terribly exposed and uneasy without his ghostly companions. He hadn't realized how comfortable he'd gotten with the concept of someone watching his back.

Finally, he opened his eyes. The panic was manageable—chased away by the sounds that comforted him. The world's song of life was the same no matter when he was, it seemed. He could do this. He would make it home. He had to.